VERDICT ON TIPPLING JUROR: GET OUT OF HERE

After all, the trial of two Orlando men charged with robbing a Mount Dora bank was a slow one, dragging through the week and into Saturday.

So one of the jurors threw back a couple of Smirnoff Ices, one each with lunch Tuesday and Wednesday, while eating with his fellow jurors in the jury assembly room.

"They're pretty much on their own for the lunch hour," said Assistant State Attorney Sue Purdy, who prosecuted the case. "I guess that wouldn't be any different than going out and having a beer with lunch."

Bailiffs found the man's cold ones when he showed up each morning, but they didn't take them away, Purdy said. "My understanding is that it's not against the law to bring alcohol into the courthouse."

Purdy said she heard bailiffs joke with the guy about his choice of beverages.

The rest of the jury, including an alternate, convicted the bank robbers. Jamarcus Griffin, 21, was found guilty of armed robbery, improper exhibition of a firearm and possession of a firearm while in the commission of an offense. Emmitt Glover Jr., 22, was found guilty of robbery and assault, but he was cleared of attempted murder.

"Since my client's life was on the line -- or at least, where he was going to spend the rest of it -- we were certainly concerned," said Orlando-based attorney James Sweeting III, who represented Glover. "That's why you have alternates."

Prosecutors, however, objected to the dismissal, saying there was no evidence that the juror wasn't doing his job.

"I had never seen him like sleeping or anything like that," Purdy said. "He had been very attentive."

Everyone did agree that the juror probably wasn't drunk, though.

Technically, Singeltary didn't have to dismiss him.

In 1987, two Florida men convicted of defrauding Seminole Electric Cooperative appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court citing widespread alcohol and drug use among the jurors -- during the trial.

According to court records, a juror in that case said in post-trial interviews that he "felt like . . . the jury was on one big party." A number of jurors lunched by drinking pitchers of beer, mixed drinks and wine, while others smoked marijuana and used cocaine.

One juror reportedly sold a quarter-pound of marijuana to another, while one described himself as "flying."

The juror who confessed said his reasoning ability was only affected one time.

But the court refused to overturn the jury's verdict, ruling that alcohol or drug use was not an outside influence, such as reading a newspaper, and therefore did not warrant a new trial.

"However severe their effect and improper their use," wrote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, "drugs or alcohol voluntarily ingested by a juror seems no more an 'outside influence' than a virus, poorly prepared food, or a lack of sleep."

Still, Singeltary wasn't necessarily wrong in dismissing the juror. If a judge really wants to keep his jury sober, that's his prerogative.